Henrich’s focus on cousin marriage is not because it lowers IQ and increases the chance of genetic diseases becoming rampant. Cousin marriage serves to support the complex kin-based social structures prevalent in most societies. People living in such societies grow up and come of age amidst a dense network of familial relationships that provide direction in life and insurance against failure. Family connections may determine a young person’s occupation, and family obligations influence who they employ.
Cousin marriage strengthens this family networks by making both sides of a couple come from the same family. Without cousin marriage, when you child marries they may join the other family rather than stay in yours, reducing the number and strength of family bonds. Planting the idea that cousin marriage is incest no different that brother-sister incest (which many people have an intrinsic aversion to) means family networks loss members every generation, weakening them. It becomes harder to place rising adults in some family occupation and young people may go to work as apprentices with unrelated people, or strike out on their own. Such individuals are social naked in the world with no support structure. Then tend to create communities of like-minded, unrelated persons, to replace these structures.
These can be religious; the 11th and 12th centuries saw strong growth in monastic communities. The could be commercial, some young people went to the rising towns, where, if they survived, they might form associations with others like them for mutual protection and friendship. These associations later developed economic functions to become the medieval guilds. Those with an academic bent might attend university, training to become a lawyer or administrator in the church or state. By the High Middle Ages the discouragement of cousin marriage had done its job, Europeans had developed identities as individuals. The process was irreversible, later removal of cousin marriage bans by protestants had no effect.
You propose that restriction on cousin marriage was part of Indo European culture, and so would be widespread. But on page 238 Henrich reports that exposure to Roman Catholicism explains nearly 75% of the variation in rates of cousin marriage in Italy, France, Turkey, and Spain. He then shows excellent correlation between four dimensions of psychology and cousin marriage. Your Indo European explanation would be expected to give a fairly uniform incidence of cousin marriage through the range when the Indo Europeans went, and similar psychologies. The West would not be different from Central Asia, Turkey, Iran Northern India and elsewhere the Indo Europeans went.
But Henrich goes to great lengths to show that the West IS different. And it’s not even Europe, but only that part of Europe with length exposure to Latin Christianity, as opposed to Greek, or Islam.
Thank you. This is great. I didn’t have the historical background on this issue but I sensed something was off when I read Henrich. In my review a few years ago I wrote “[G]iven today's antipathy to religion among educated academic types (Henrich's target audience), it is possible that his editorial decision to sidestep the actual religion thing and blame the benefits of Christianity on an accident was actually the best way for Henrich to spread abroad the message of Christianity's societal benefits while also maintaining his academic reputation and make him a bunch of money on book sales.” Whether this was just a pragmatic move or a Straussian way to spread a pro-Christianity story I don’t know, but I suspect Henrich doesn’t fully believe his own explanation.
Ok, but Henrich certainly popularized it for our time. Just from a quick Google search (not claiming expertise in this field), the Goody perspective that you linked to was highly debatable. Shaw and Saller responded to Goody with a sharp critique: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2802181?origin=crossref
As I see it, Henrich selected the weaker side of an existing debate because it served his purpose and ran with it.
Classicist & civil lawyer here (ie, have practised in a mixed system and studied Roman law in order to qualify). You are correct. Pagan Romans hated cousin marriage.
>All steppe peoples shared the cousin marriage taboo, which is completely unrelated to Jewish or any Semitic law. We know this because it’s cited all over ... in early law-codes.
This is a way too strong statement if you only support it with two examples and one counterexample. I'm happy to accept this but more evidence is needed. If we look at ancient Germanic or Celtic practices, which should be important for a discussion about WEIRD, I see no cousin marriage taboo.
EDIT: I've done some digging and I can't find any academic research about cousin marriage among the PIE. If this is your own novel results then you should make this very clear.
Genetic studies on Ancient Germanic and Celtic peoples proves that cousin marriage was less common amongst them than most other peoples around the world
Interesting. Islamic jurists follow Martin Luther's literal thinking: if it is not forbidden by the Quran (or Leviticus) it must therefore be allowed. There are also a couple of hadiths (sayings attributed to Muhammad) about keeping family ties that Muslim jurists have used to justify first-cousin marriage. And, of course, Muhammad's daughter Fatima married her cousin Ali (that fact, by itself, would be considered sufficient for Shiites and a lot of Sunnis).
As a result, cousin marriage in Islamic countries is EXTREMELY high -- close to 40% in countries like Egypt. Birth defects are very common. This has become a big controversy in the UK, where immigration opponents cite large Muslim immigrant families with birth defects as a drain on the NHS.
1. There are no Hadiths in any of the 6 major Hadith books supporting cousin marriage, in fact there's plenty of Hadiths that openly discourage (but not outright ban) the practice. Even in the instance where Prophet Muhammad married a first cousin, he initially turned her down in part because of their close relation and he intentionally avoided having children with her.
2. Ali and Fatima were 2nd cousins once removed. Marriage between 2nd cousins and beyond doesn't have the same health risks as those between 1st cousins and closer relatives. 2nd cousin marriage is also very common amongst Askenazi Jews.
3. Muslims who aren't of the Middle East nor the Indian Subcontinent (the only 2 regions in the world with high incest rates) have generally low rates cousin marriage.
There is no proof in hadiths or otherwise that the Prophet avoided having children with her
2. Ali and Fatima were 1st cousins once removed. Ali ibn Abi Talib was born to Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib and his wife Fatima bint Asad. Muhammad’s father was Abdullah, also a son of Abd al-Muttalib. This makes Ali and Muhammad first cousins. That makes his daughter (Fatima) 1st cousin once removed.
3. Muslims who are in North Africa and Africa overal have higher rates of cousim marriages compared to other areas of the world. Sadly we dont have data in 2 major Muslim areas which are the Indo-Malayan region and Central Asia but on the other ones there is a stronger tendency as well https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/inbreeding-by-country
Believe me I am a pretty hardcore Wahabbi disliker but they are an autistic bunch when it comes to hadiths so they are trustworthy on that. I have heard in family and from Imams similar positions, but illuminate me please, which are the Hadiths (they have to be sahih and accepted traditionally by Sunni shari’a) discouraging them?
Ok cool on that fact, he still married her. What I meant to convey is that there is no proof that he didnt want to make kids, he married her, what other vouching for cousin marriage do you need. After the Quran, the actions of the prophet are the guiding principles for the Muslims which come to us via the Hadiths.
2. Which Ali and Fatima are you talking about?
3. On what data are you basing your assumption? Do you mean by European Muslims the very secularized Albanians, Kosovars and Bosnians who lived under basically 50 years of Communism forbidding such practices? Or you mean Turks who got modernized by Ataturks reforms?
I have not found data for Indonesians, Malayans or Bruneians tho. As for Subsaharan Africans there seems to be a study for Fulanis https://www.jstor.org/stable/41466834
I am really curious and would be open to any data and proof you share to update my opinions
You sound like a closet Wahabbi/Salafi yourself so I don't buy that.
Wahabbi/Salafis are notoriously unreliable and dishonest with Hadith. They frequently use Hadiths known to be fraudulent, sometimes fabricate Hadiths on the spot to support their views and constantly quote Hadiths out of context in an illiterate manner.
"k cool on that fact, he still married her. What I meant to convey is that there is no proof that he didnt want to make kids, he married her, what other vouching for cousin marriage do you need. After the Quran, the actions of the prophet are the guiding principles for the Muslims which come to us via the Hadiths."
This is another stupid argument typical of Salafis. Just because the Prophet himself did a certain thing and/or allowed a certain thing doesn't mean that thing or action is mandatory nor even encouraged, let alone virtuous. Nowhere in the The Quran nor any of the Hadiths ever said that 1st cousin marriage is a recommend practice. The fact that he initially turned her down in part because she was his 1st cousin (as well as the fact that the marriage was criticized by his own Companions) only reinforces this fact. Following the Sunnah of The Prophet doesn't mean mindlessly copying every little thing he ever did with zero regard for the context of the situation nor his reasons as to why he did this or that thing in the first place.
Cousin marriage was never particularly popular among Albanians, Kosovars, Bosnians nor Ottoman Turks in the first place according to genetic studies. It isn't something that started with Communism nor Secularism.
The Fulani are an outlier in West Africa, in more ways than one. Other West African Muslims like the Hausa, Kanuri, Wolof, Yoruba Muslims, Mandes, etc don't show nearly the same rates of cousin marriage as the Fulani.
"I have heard in family and from Imams similar positions, but illuminate me please, which are the Hadiths (they have to be sahih and accepted traditionally by Sunni shari’a) discouraging them?"
Anyone who ever says "the majority of scholars/Imams said X" is always lying, both Salafis and Western scholars are constantly guilty of this. And the idea that any Hadith or collection of Hadiths was universally regarded as sahih or weak by Classical Sunni Imams is just another Modern myth promoted by both of them.
Please sources, specific Hadiths, specific intepretations.
All 4 madhabs aside from the retarded Saudis keeps the same chain, Quran > Hadiths and even the most “liberal” of madhabs, the Maliki one keeps hadiths+the lives of the Medina people for the first 3 generations.
I am asking for hadiths accepted in major Madhabs that discourage, or even show as “makruh” the practice.
I agree with the Prophet thing, Mu’tazilites do too, but they dont exist anymore and most Muslims model their behaviour by “what would have the Prophet done”. I never said that Islam pushes cousin marriage, I said that it is neutral or neutral positive letting cultures with high cousin intermarriage develop without restriction.
The last thing is a lie, when you read old works they always comment on what collection is Sahih and nor, this is not something started recently, Sahih Bukhari has been used as a true base for a long time. So much so that historically rejecting the Hadith was noted multiple times and fought by mainstream Sunni and Shiia kingdoms (the Kharijites).
As for the cousin marriage between European and African peoples I am willing to trust you in this but I’d like to see the numbers you base your conclusion on. Similarly on the Indo-Malayan muslims.
I think many cultural evolutionists commit a lot of attribution errors. This is my problem with Boyd and Richerson. Their math is flawed because their assumptions are.
Among North Indian Hindus, cousin marriage is strictly forbidden. Mainstream Hindu Law bans it up to all sharing even one grandparent going back to the 5th generation (3x Great) on the paternal side and up till 3rd generation on the maternal side.
Ironically this is one of the reasons those Dravidic South Indian Brahmins have taken over swaths of Silicon Valley much more so than North Indian Brahmins. Having a bunch of complicated customary marriage rules which mix in a serendipitous amount of consanguinity has done wonders for production of outliers in the far right tail... without producing too many offspring with actual tails :P
Heh... Just realised I commented on this thread below last December and forgot about it.
1) Cousin marriage is still a strong taboo for North Indian Hindus, esp for upper castes. It did not get diluted by Dravidian influences.
2) Cousin marriage in England features quite frequently in literature, eg in novels of Jane Austen and Bronte sisters. In Jane Eyre, a Church of England parson proposes to marry his first cousin.
In Pride and Prejudice, another parson proposes to marry Elizabeth Bennett (a rather remote cousin).
Nowhere in these books, is cousin marriage treated as anything out of course.
Great post, yes in many Indian castes / regions not only is cousin-marriage prohibited, you can't even marry someone from your own village. This is a sharp north / south divide, with cousin marriage much more prevalent in South India than in North.
If you look into certain South Indian Brahmin caste groupings (e.g. the Iyers), they seem to have arrived at a set of (on the surface arbitrary, but not) rules enforcing varying degrees of consanguinity per generation such that the running total is maintained at 'just right' for insanely high IQ without the deleterious accumulation of genetic load. See Silicon Valley.
To me, there are two very interesting points: one simply a wry observation that the more things change, the more they remain the same; and the other is more of a question of what particular factors led to the steppe tradition of no cousin marriages?
The first point is an ironic observation that Gregory I's use of scripture (falsely) to justify social policy is very similar to the 1973's SCOTUS Roe v Wade decision that was an instrument to support social policy that was justified by essentially false notions that there was textual support to be found in the constitution.
Both were arguments from authority (judicial and religious leaders), with an attempt to use an even higher authority for support (constitution and scripture).
Please note that this observation is not an attack on abortion rights but rather as identifying deceptive public policy tools used similarly down the ages.
The second point is to wonder what *specific* forces were present on the steppes that favored the widespread adoption of a prohibition against cousin marriage. I think it's probably a result of the physical environmental conditions that were present, but what exactly those were, and how the ban helped, is not clear.
It would be fun to try to reason this out.
Now diverging, support for cousin marriage, and even sibling or offspring marriage, would seem to me to be favored by bloodline-based power structures seeking to strengthen their positions of relative power within a society. Wealth/assets, and hence power, tend to distill and concentrate. If the families that practice this are sufficiently powerful, they can simply look at the negative genetic consequences as the cost of retaining position/power, and more-or-less discard those who are genetically effective.
This would led to social stratification and likely be favored by elites.
And extending this concept, I wonder if the consequences of functionally questionable off-spring from cousin marriages in a much more marginal, subsistence society, like seasonal herdsmen on the steppes, might be much more dire for the families as a whole. That the consequences of genetic erosion might put greater stress on a marginal subsistence group, either thru attempting to care for these offspring, or more likely, losing the extra manpower to be expected from the healthy offspring of a reproductive union.
Now, this practice of avoiding incestuous marriage has a side effect of tending to resist bloodline power acquisition, and hence social stratification. It also would make finding a suitable mate harder, causing the young males to widen their geographic search, with the consequent results that the culture would tend to spread over a larger geographical area.
But all this is simply my own questionable speculation. Interesting, though...
Well Aryans come from a herding/migratory/rural zone and Semites come from a farming/stationary/urban-ish zone, so there's a big environmental difference there.
I suspect genetic/defects justifications to disfavour cousin marriages were very secondary to concentration of wealth and power justifications. On the Steppe spreading out and diversifying and having many social ties to call on in would be important to long term survival. Meanwhile in the lands of the first kings developing norms that favour keeping wealth concentrated would be favoured by those who have enough concentrated wealth to want to keep.
"On the Steppe spreading out and diversifying and having many social ties to call on in would be important to long term survival. Meanwhile in the lands of the first kings developing norms that favor keeping wealth concentrated would be favoured by those who have enough concentrated wealth to want to keep."
My reading of this is that you're saying that there are positive advantages to first cousin marriages for steppe cultures ("many social ties"), even though the article tells us that steppe cultures prohibited such marriages.
Sorry that wasn't clear. I meant that you have more social ties by your family marrying into more, different, families. As opposed to "stronger family ties" which would, I guess, mean marrying the same family multiple times.
YES. Great post. This is precisely the problem I have with Henrich: he ends up with a very thin sociological picture because he consistently overstates the role of one institutional actor (the Church) to create a just-so story about the evolution of Western values. The cousin marriage question is the essential one because it’s foundational for him, but I found myself particularly frustrated by his discussions of property and market growth from the late medieval period on. He knows this is essential to increasingly individualistic norms, and he can’t either dismiss it or make it purely a function of Christianity, but he still wants to tell a story where the Church is THE dominant force, so there’s a lot of hedging. As someone who absolutely thinks that historical family structure and economic change are intertwined, the whole book ends up feeling like a missed opportunity because he’s so eager to prove his one thesis. It has its own issues, but I really prefer the work that Jan Luiten van Zanden and his team have been doing on the European Marriage Pattern and economic development.
The Christian sanctification of the Roman social synthesis—law is human, single-spouse marriage, no cousin marriage, mutual consent for marriage, testamentary rights—mattered for the suppression of kin groups. But, yes, the ban on cousin marriage was pushing at an open door.
Henrich’s focus on cousin marriage is not because it lowers IQ and increases the chance of genetic diseases becoming rampant. Cousin marriage serves to support the complex kin-based social structures prevalent in most societies. People living in such societies grow up and come of age amidst a dense network of familial relationships that provide direction in life and insurance against failure. Family connections may determine a young person’s occupation, and family obligations influence who they employ.
Cousin marriage strengthens this family networks by making both sides of a couple come from the same family. Without cousin marriage, when you child marries they may join the other family rather than stay in yours, reducing the number and strength of family bonds. Planting the idea that cousin marriage is incest no different that brother-sister incest (which many people have an intrinsic aversion to) means family networks loss members every generation, weakening them. It becomes harder to place rising adults in some family occupation and young people may go to work as apprentices with unrelated people, or strike out on their own. Such individuals are social naked in the world with no support structure. Then tend to create communities of like-minded, unrelated persons, to replace these structures.
These can be religious; the 11th and 12th centuries saw strong growth in monastic communities. The could be commercial, some young people went to the rising towns, where, if they survived, they might form associations with others like them for mutual protection and friendship. These associations later developed economic functions to become the medieval guilds. Those with an academic bent might attend university, training to become a lawyer or administrator in the church or state. By the High Middle Ages the discouragement of cousin marriage had done its job, Europeans had developed identities as individuals. The process was irreversible, later removal of cousin marriage bans by protestants had no effect.
You propose that restriction on cousin marriage was part of Indo European culture, and so would be widespread. But on page 238 Henrich reports that exposure to Roman Catholicism explains nearly 75% of the variation in rates of cousin marriage in Italy, France, Turkey, and Spain. He then shows excellent correlation between four dimensions of psychology and cousin marriage. Your Indo European explanation would be expected to give a fairly uniform incidence of cousin marriage through the range when the Indo Europeans went, and similar psychologies. The West would not be different from Central Asia, Turkey, Iran Northern India and elsewhere the Indo Europeans went.
But Henrich goes to great lengths to show that the West IS different. And it’s not even Europe, but only that part of Europe with length exposure to Latin Christianity, as opposed to Greek, or Islam.
Thank you. This is great. I didn’t have the historical background on this issue but I sensed something was off when I read Henrich. In my review a few years ago I wrote “[G]iven today's antipathy to religion among educated academic types (Henrich's target audience), it is possible that his editorial decision to sidestep the actual religion thing and blame the benefits of Christianity on an accident was actually the best way for Henrich to spread abroad the message of Christianity's societal benefits while also maintaining his academic reputation and make him a bunch of money on book sales.” Whether this was just a pragmatic move or a Straussian way to spread a pro-Christianity story I don’t know, but I suspect Henrich doesn’t fully believe his own explanation.
Again.
Its not a Heindrich idea: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/development-of-the-family-and-marriage-in-europe/B2090AFDBA7748E625497D2328D30525
Ok, but Henrich certainly popularized it for our time. Just from a quick Google search (not claiming expertise in this field), the Goody perspective that you linked to was highly debatable. Shaw and Saller responded to Goody with a sharp critique: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2802181?origin=crossref
As I see it, Henrich selected the weaker side of an existing debate because it served his purpose and ran with it.
Not really.
Goody never said that romans were endogamous.
Authors like Fukuyama wrote extensibly, and in the exactly same terms, about all those ideas::
https://www.amazon.es/Origins-Political-Order-Prehuman-Revolution/dp/1846682576/ref=asc_df_1846682576/?tag=googshopes-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=699717042925&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12657678793141991625&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1005479&hvtargid=pla-406163990393&psc=1&mcid=85eafe6dc3543e7c81df628b8d7dda2f&gad_source=1
In the Emmanueld Tood work you can find similar but way more nuanced ideas
The most important points in Heindrich work are not original at all but a common talking point in, many, others authors work.
Even in internet you can find It way before the Heindrich book was published. Or even YouTube: https://youtu.be/H03H73tdh6s?si=f2trU4sIJOttigiC
I mean: It was not a new idea needed of more attention.
(Yes, english is not my first or second language.)
Classicist & civil lawyer here (ie, have practised in a mixed system and studied Roman law in order to qualify). You are correct. Pagan Romans hated cousin marriage.
Europeans by and large avoided inbreeding in spite of Abrahamist teachings, not because of them.
>All steppe peoples shared the cousin marriage taboo, which is completely unrelated to Jewish or any Semitic law. We know this because it’s cited all over ... in early law-codes.
This is a way too strong statement if you only support it with two examples and one counterexample. I'm happy to accept this but more evidence is needed. If we look at ancient Germanic or Celtic practices, which should be important for a discussion about WEIRD, I see no cousin marriage taboo.
EDIT: I've done some digging and I can't find any academic research about cousin marriage among the PIE. If this is your own novel results then you should make this very clear.
Genetic studies on Ancient Germanic and Celtic peoples proves that cousin marriage was less common amongst them than most other peoples around the world
Interesting. Islamic jurists follow Martin Luther's literal thinking: if it is not forbidden by the Quran (or Leviticus) it must therefore be allowed. There are also a couple of hadiths (sayings attributed to Muhammad) about keeping family ties that Muslim jurists have used to justify first-cousin marriage. And, of course, Muhammad's daughter Fatima married her cousin Ali (that fact, by itself, would be considered sufficient for Shiites and a lot of Sunnis).
As a result, cousin marriage in Islamic countries is EXTREMELY high -- close to 40% in countries like Egypt. Birth defects are very common. This has become a big controversy in the UK, where immigration opponents cite large Muslim immigrant families with birth defects as a drain on the NHS.
1. There are no Hadiths in any of the 6 major Hadith books supporting cousin marriage, in fact there's plenty of Hadiths that openly discourage (but not outright ban) the practice. Even in the instance where Prophet Muhammad married a first cousin, he initially turned her down in part because of their close relation and he intentionally avoided having children with her.
2. Ali and Fatima were 2nd cousins once removed. Marriage between 2nd cousins and beyond doesn't have the same health risks as those between 1st cousins and closer relatives. 2nd cousin marriage is also very common amongst Askenazi Jews.
3. Muslims who aren't of the Middle East nor the Indian Subcontinent (the only 2 regions in the world with high incest rates) have generally low rates cousin marriage.
We didnt read the same books then:
1. Quran has a list of forbiddens and cousins are not included in the list https://quran.com/an-nisa/23
There are no hadiths (authentics) that discourage the practice of marrying relatives https://islamqa.info/en/answers/140840/marrying-relatives-and-the-hadith-choose-strangers-for-marriage
There is no proof in hadiths or otherwise that the Prophet avoided having children with her
2. Ali and Fatima were 1st cousins once removed. Ali ibn Abi Talib was born to Abu Talib ibn Abd al-Muttalib and his wife Fatima bint Asad. Muhammad’s father was Abdullah, also a son of Abd al-Muttalib. This makes Ali and Muhammad first cousins. That makes his daughter (Fatima) 1st cousin once removed.
3. Muslims who are in North Africa and Africa overal have higher rates of cousim marriages compared to other areas of the world. Sadly we dont have data in 2 major Muslim areas which are the Indo-Malayan region and Central Asia but on the other ones there is a stronger tendency as well https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/inbreeding-by-country
Quoting a notoriously unreliable Salafi website isn't doing you favors lol.
Muhammad only had children with his first and final wife. The cousin he married was known to be infertile before he married her
2.They were second cousins, you got the names mixed up
Sub-Saharan African Muslims Don't have elevated rates of cousin marriage, neither do ethnic European Muslims nor Southeast Asians
Believe me I am a pretty hardcore Wahabbi disliker but they are an autistic bunch when it comes to hadiths so they are trustworthy on that. I have heard in family and from Imams similar positions, but illuminate me please, which are the Hadiths (they have to be sahih and accepted traditionally by Sunni shari’a) discouraging them?
Ok cool on that fact, he still married her. What I meant to convey is that there is no proof that he didnt want to make kids, he married her, what other vouching for cousin marriage do you need. After the Quran, the actions of the prophet are the guiding principles for the Muslims which come to us via the Hadiths.
2. Which Ali and Fatima are you talking about?
3. On what data are you basing your assumption? Do you mean by European Muslims the very secularized Albanians, Kosovars and Bosnians who lived under basically 50 years of Communism forbidding such practices? Or you mean Turks who got modernized by Ataturks reforms?
I have not found data for Indonesians, Malayans or Bruneians tho. As for Subsaharan Africans there seems to be a study for Fulanis https://www.jstor.org/stable/41466834
I am really curious and would be open to any data and proof you share to update my opinions
You sound like a closet Wahabbi/Salafi yourself so I don't buy that.
Wahabbi/Salafis are notoriously unreliable and dishonest with Hadith. They frequently use Hadiths known to be fraudulent, sometimes fabricate Hadiths on the spot to support their views and constantly quote Hadiths out of context in an illiterate manner.
"k cool on that fact, he still married her. What I meant to convey is that there is no proof that he didnt want to make kids, he married her, what other vouching for cousin marriage do you need. After the Quran, the actions of the prophet are the guiding principles for the Muslims which come to us via the Hadiths."
This is another stupid argument typical of Salafis. Just because the Prophet himself did a certain thing and/or allowed a certain thing doesn't mean that thing or action is mandatory nor even encouraged, let alone virtuous. Nowhere in the The Quran nor any of the Hadiths ever said that 1st cousin marriage is a recommend practice. The fact that he initially turned her down in part because she was his 1st cousin (as well as the fact that the marriage was criticized by his own Companions) only reinforces this fact. Following the Sunnah of The Prophet doesn't mean mindlessly copying every little thing he ever did with zero regard for the context of the situation nor his reasons as to why he did this or that thing in the first place.
Cousin marriage was never particularly popular among Albanians, Kosovars, Bosnians nor Ottoman Turks in the first place according to genetic studies. It isn't something that started with Communism nor Secularism.
The Fulani are an outlier in West Africa, in more ways than one. Other West African Muslims like the Hausa, Kanuri, Wolof, Yoruba Muslims, Mandes, etc don't show nearly the same rates of cousin marriage as the Fulani.
"I have heard in family and from Imams similar positions, but illuminate me please, which are the Hadiths (they have to be sahih and accepted traditionally by Sunni shari’a) discouraging them?"
Anyone who ever says "the majority of scholars/Imams said X" is always lying, both Salafis and Western scholars are constantly guilty of this. And the idea that any Hadith or collection of Hadiths was universally regarded as sahih or weak by Classical Sunni Imams is just another Modern myth promoted by both of them.
If that's true, then it's pretty funny in this context when talking about birth defects. The Fulani were extremely militarily successful.
Please sources, specific Hadiths, specific intepretations.
All 4 madhabs aside from the retarded Saudis keeps the same chain, Quran > Hadiths and even the most “liberal” of madhabs, the Maliki one keeps hadiths+the lives of the Medina people for the first 3 generations.
I am asking for hadiths accepted in major Madhabs that discourage, or even show as “makruh” the practice.
I agree with the Prophet thing, Mu’tazilites do too, but they dont exist anymore and most Muslims model their behaviour by “what would have the Prophet done”. I never said that Islam pushes cousin marriage, I said that it is neutral or neutral positive letting cultures with high cousin intermarriage develop without restriction.
The last thing is a lie, when you read old works they always comment on what collection is Sahih and nor, this is not something started recently, Sahih Bukhari has been used as a true base for a long time. So much so that historically rejecting the Hadith was noted multiple times and fought by mainstream Sunni and Shiia kingdoms (the Kharijites).
As for the cousin marriage between European and African peoples I am willing to trust you in this but I’d like to see the numbers you base your conclusion on. Similarly on the Indo-Malayan muslims.
I think many cultural evolutionists commit a lot of attribution errors. This is my problem with Boyd and Richerson. Their math is flawed because their assumptions are.
The article about cousin marriage got my attention. I have wonder about that for a while good reading.
Among North Indian Hindus, cousin marriage is strictly forbidden. Mainstream Hindu Law bans it up to all sharing even one grandparent going back to the 5th generation (3x Great) on the paternal side and up till 3rd generation on the maternal side.
Ironically this is one of the reasons those Dravidic South Indian Brahmins have taken over swaths of Silicon Valley much more so than North Indian Brahmins. Having a bunch of complicated customary marriage rules which mix in a serendipitous amount of consanguinity has done wonders for production of outliers in the far right tail... without producing too many offspring with actual tails :P
Heh... Just realised I commented on this thread below last December and forgot about it.
I would add that
1) Cousin marriage is still a strong taboo for North Indian Hindus, esp for upper castes. It did not get diluted by Dravidian influences.
2) Cousin marriage in England features quite frequently in literature, eg in novels of Jane Austen and Bronte sisters. In Jane Eyre, a Church of England parson proposes to marry his first cousin.
In Pride and Prejudice, another parson proposes to marry Elizabeth Bennett (a rather remote cousin).
Nowhere in these books, is cousin marriage treated as anything out of course.
That's great, Vishal, thanks, very apropos. Do you know of any estimates about the prevalence of cousin marriage in India?
No hard data but
1) Among North Indian upper caste Hindus--close to vanishing
2) North India lower caste Hindus-- At most, it is uncommon
3) Muslims--quite common
4) South Indian Hindus-- aprox 20-25 %
South Indian kinship --- a person can marry a cousin from father's sister side but not father's brother'side
Similarly, it is permitted to marry a cousin from mother's brother's side but not mother's sister side.
This type of cross-kinship marriage norms is, I believe, exists in many scattered societies wordlwide
Great post, yes in many Indian castes / regions not only is cousin-marriage prohibited, you can't even marry someone from your own village. This is a sharp north / south divide, with cousin marriage much more prevalent in South India than in North.
If you look into certain South Indian Brahmin caste groupings (e.g. the Iyers), they seem to have arrived at a set of (on the surface arbitrary, but not) rules enforcing varying degrees of consanguinity per generation such that the running total is maintained at 'just right' for insanely high IQ without the deleterious accumulation of genetic load. See Silicon Valley.
Great stuff, can you guys recommend any further reading on the topic?
Great post
To me, there are two very interesting points: one simply a wry observation that the more things change, the more they remain the same; and the other is more of a question of what particular factors led to the steppe tradition of no cousin marriages?
The first point is an ironic observation that Gregory I's use of scripture (falsely) to justify social policy is very similar to the 1973's SCOTUS Roe v Wade decision that was an instrument to support social policy that was justified by essentially false notions that there was textual support to be found in the constitution.
Both were arguments from authority (judicial and religious leaders), with an attempt to use an even higher authority for support (constitution and scripture).
Please note that this observation is not an attack on abortion rights but rather as identifying deceptive public policy tools used similarly down the ages.
The second point is to wonder what *specific* forces were present on the steppes that favored the widespread adoption of a prohibition against cousin marriage. I think it's probably a result of the physical environmental conditions that were present, but what exactly those were, and how the ban helped, is not clear.
It would be fun to try to reason this out.
Now diverging, support for cousin marriage, and even sibling or offspring marriage, would seem to me to be favored by bloodline-based power structures seeking to strengthen their positions of relative power within a society. Wealth/assets, and hence power, tend to distill and concentrate. If the families that practice this are sufficiently powerful, they can simply look at the negative genetic consequences as the cost of retaining position/power, and more-or-less discard those who are genetically effective.
This would led to social stratification and likely be favored by elites.
And extending this concept, I wonder if the consequences of functionally questionable off-spring from cousin marriages in a much more marginal, subsistence society, like seasonal herdsmen on the steppes, might be much more dire for the families as a whole. That the consequences of genetic erosion might put greater stress on a marginal subsistence group, either thru attempting to care for these offspring, or more likely, losing the extra manpower to be expected from the healthy offspring of a reproductive union.
Now, this practice of avoiding incestuous marriage has a side effect of tending to resist bloodline power acquisition, and hence social stratification. It also would make finding a suitable mate harder, causing the young males to widen their geographic search, with the consequent results that the culture would tend to spread over a larger geographical area.
But all this is simply my own questionable speculation. Interesting, though...
Well Aryans come from a herding/migratory/rural zone and Semites come from a farming/stationary/urban-ish zone, so there's a big environmental difference there.
I suspect genetic/defects justifications to disfavour cousin marriages were very secondary to concentration of wealth and power justifications. On the Steppe spreading out and diversifying and having many social ties to call on in would be important to long term survival. Meanwhile in the lands of the first kings developing norms that favour keeping wealth concentrated would be favoured by those who have enough concentrated wealth to want to keep.
"On the Steppe spreading out and diversifying and having many social ties to call on in would be important to long term survival. Meanwhile in the lands of the first kings developing norms that favor keeping wealth concentrated would be favoured by those who have enough concentrated wealth to want to keep."
My reading of this is that you're saying that there are positive advantages to first cousin marriages for steppe cultures ("many social ties"), even though the article tells us that steppe cultures prohibited such marriages.
Can you clear up any understanding?
Sorry that wasn't clear. I meant that you have more social ties by your family marrying into more, different, families. As opposed to "stronger family ties" which would, I guess, mean marrying the same family multiple times.
Ah. I see now.
Thanks for your patience and for clearing up the statement for me!
YES. Great post. This is precisely the problem I have with Henrich: he ends up with a very thin sociological picture because he consistently overstates the role of one institutional actor (the Church) to create a just-so story about the evolution of Western values. The cousin marriage question is the essential one because it’s foundational for him, but I found myself particularly frustrated by his discussions of property and market growth from the late medieval period on. He knows this is essential to increasingly individualistic norms, and he can’t either dismiss it or make it purely a function of Christianity, but he still wants to tell a story where the Church is THE dominant force, so there’s a lot of hedging. As someone who absolutely thinks that historical family structure and economic change are intertwined, the whole book ends up feeling like a missed opportunity because he’s so eager to prove his one thesis. It has its own issues, but I really prefer the work that Jan Luiten van Zanden and his team have been doing on the European Marriage Pattern and economic development.
This is a linkback: https://whyweshould.substack.com/p/reading-joseph-henrich-two-social
Also covers why species with inter-group competition will outcompete species with group-selection potholing in a Darwinian evolutionary space.
The Christian sanctification of the Roman social synthesis—law is human, single-spouse marriage, no cousin marriage, mutual consent for marriage, testamentary rights—mattered for the suppression of kin groups. But, yes, the ban on cousin marriage was pushing at an open door.
https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/weird-western-educated-industrialised